Arnold Sports Festival, bursting at seams, looking for room to flex

Organizers of the Arnold Sports Festival hope to see the annual event in Columbus become the site of more U.S. Olympic qualifiers, but they will need an assist from Ohio State University to do so.

This year’s festival, scheduled March 1-4, will host the U.S. team trials in weightlifting for the 2012 Summer Games in London. The competition is scheduled to start at 4 p.m. March 4 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center.

But the chances for adding Olympic qualifiers hinges on finding other venues because the Arnold has maxed out spaces at the convention center, Franklin County Veterans Memorial and other downtown sites, said Jim Lorimer, the Columbus businessman who cofounded the sports festival in 1989 with actor and former professional body builder Arnold Schwarzenegger. The two remain partners in the event.

“If we want to expand the Arnold Sports Festival,” Lorimer said, “we must move (some events) up the street to Ohio State.”

Olympic hopefuls

Lorimer said he has had discussions with OSU officials about the Arnold holding a swimming competition at the McCorkle Aquatic Pavilion on campus. The festival already hosts its indoor track and field competition for 1,600 youth in French Field House at Ohio State.

Track and field is one of 12 Olympic sports included at the Arnold. Some of the Olympic qualifying schedules for those sports would not align with the festival’s dates, Lorimer said, but there may be potential to land a few of them. For instance, the Arnold and Greater Columbus Sports Commission had hoped to hold this year’s Olympic team trials for weightlifting and wrestling, but the wrestling event was awarded to Iowa City instead.

Lorimer said other sports with Olympic qualifier potential at the Arnold include table tennis, archery, boxing and martial arts, such as karate, judo and taekwondo.

“I would love to get table tennis,” he said. “It’s really spectacular. It’s not pingpong.”

Landing Olympic trials is one of the sports commission’s goals as it works to raise Columbus’ profile as a destination for national sporting events. It helped bring the Olympic trials for the 2008 U.S. synchronized swimming team to Ohio State.

Team trials in weightlifting will be held in conjunction with the USA Weightlifting National Championships. The trials only will determine members of the U.S. women’s Olympic team, however, because USA Weightlifting rules call for the men to qualify during either the World or Pan Am championships, said Brandon Dyett, spokesman for the weightlifting organization.

Men and women will compete in the National Championships at the Arnold, which will draw more than 200 athletes in eight weight classes for men and seven groups for women. The Arnold, sports commission and Columbus Weightlifting Club put together the bid to land the nationals and team trials.

“USA Weightlifting has had successful events at the Arnold in the past,” Dyett said. “That gave us confidence going forward that the (Columbus) folks would put us in a good place to showcase our Olympic trials at a major event.”

Already impactful

Overall, the Arnold will host 45 sports and events drawing 18,000 athletes, including 16,000 under 18 years old. The festival is expected to draw 175,000 people over four days, many of them attending the Arnold Fitness Expo at the convention center.

The expo has sold out its 700 booths for exhibitors – at $2,000 per booth – and has a waiting list. Revenue from the expo allows the festival to provide free space to groups that stage the athletic competitions, Lorimer said.

“It’s the only thing that enables us to get this thing in the black,” he said.

The Arnold remains one of the top revenue generators among special events in Central Ohio. It produced an estimated $42.4 million in visitor spending last year, trailing only the $180 million generated by the month-long All American Quarter Horse Congress at the Ohio Expo Center, according to data from Experience Columbus.

Compared with other three- and four-day conventions, trade shows and conferences, the Arnold Sports Festival is “hands-down, the largest, most impactful event we host each year,” Experience Columbus spokesman Scott Peacock said in an email.

“We are very proud of that fact,” he said, “and very grateful to Jim Lorimer and the rest of the team for their unwavering commitment to Columbus over the years.”